Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

Luke 2:10

Sometimes, when you hear the manufactured, tinny cheerfulness of the Christmas machine, do you just get tired? Preemptively exhausted by the work that goes into our holiday happiness? The decorations, the shopping, the baking, the wrapping, the menu planning, the family devotions, the music, the lights? For a busy parent (let’s be honest, usually the woman) it often feels less like an invitation to celebrate and more like an extra scoop of emotional labor. AND physical labor.

Here’s something to consider.

Joy and happiness are not the same.

When we see the giant snowball of Christmas celebration rolling towards us, it comes with the expectation of happiness. That all the cookies and cocoa and presents and pretties will bring us happiness. Which can be true, for sure. But can also be a lie.

I’ve had several blue Christmases. Holidays where I am grieving, or angry, or clinically, chemically depressed. The holiday happy-s don’t exist in my emotional reservoir. That is when I am allowed to rest in the fact that joy is not a synonym of happiness.

Joy is not an emotion. It is a state of being. It is what happens when you realize, deep in your bones, that your value is not tied to your performance. It is a snipping of the strings that tie you to your carefully curated persona. It allows you to float above the striving and the stress and rest in the fact that you are loved, just as you are, flaws and all.

It is a feeling that your life, the way you spend your days, the friends and and family that surround you- are holy. Not potentially holy, if everything goes to plan, but sacred in this moment, even with bad attitudes and flat tires and dirt smudges on the knees of their sweatpants. It is the bone deep knowledge that life is a gift, and one that is beautiful beyond description. That each moment is threaded with magic and hope and inexpressible beauty, for those that have eyes to see.

Joy is the ability to love the world, not for what it can do, but for what it is. To celebrate the diversity, the whimsy, the color and the chaos. Joy is a gift, of perspective, of gratitude, and of hope.

Even when we can’t be happy, we can believe in joy. It is not something we manufacture, something we put on like an overly hot, itchy Christmas sweater. It’s a blanket, lovingly tucked around us, smelling of vanilla and peppermint and childhood. Sink into its warmth today, and don’t try so hard. It will all be ok. And it won’t. And none of that is in your control.